The Analysis of The Book "Winning Balance" by Shawn Johnson

Book Report

For our first book report, I chose to read Winning Balance by Shawn Johnson. The main setting of the book is the Olympics in Beijing. This is where she competed for her Olympic medals and what she trained for her whole life. Shawn Johnson is a gymnast and she has been training ever since she was young. Her coaches noticed a spark in her around the age of right, and everything went up from there. Shawn has had the dream of going to the olympics ever since she was a little girl. She took that dream and made it a reality. The theme of this book is to never give up on your dreams. Shawn really explained how that not everything will come easily in life. Shawn worked hard her entire life and overcame a lot of obstacles to achieve her life long goal of becoming an Olympic gold medalist. She also talks about life after the Olympics and how she copes without gymnastics in her life. After doing a sport for so long, then not doing it anymore, it would be a big change.Shawn Johnson is oviously the main character in the book.

She was born and raised in Des Mois, Iowa. She has been a gymnast ever since she was three years of age. She trains 30 hours a week and still manages to attend public school, which is uncommon in the sport of gymnastics. Her parents wanted to make sure she could balance her life with gymnastics. She went on to Beijing in 2008 for the Olympics and became a gold medalist in the balance beam. She also won two silvers and one bronze. Outside of gymnastics, she starred on "Dancing With the Stars."

Now she tries to lead on a normal life without the pressure of gymnastics. They encourage her to still have a normal life outside of gymnastics, that is why she still went to public school and didn't train as much as her other teammates. They are her rock through everything and have always supported every decision she has made. Chow and Li are very important people in Shawn's life, they are the reason that she got as far as she did. They started coaching Shawn when she was 6 years old. They always encouraged and looked out for her well being. They believed that she had plenty of potential, energy, and heart to go far in the sport and coached her all the way through it.

The story of this book is told through Shawn's eyes. You get to read about the things she experienced, from the 2008 Olympics to Dancing with the Stars, along with all the people that supported and loved her through it. The book is very inspirational and relatable to everyday life. At the end of every chapter, Shawn would write a little section called "Lessons Learned" and I really like how she did that. She would take the information given from that chapter, then write the lesson she learned. I would recommend this book to everyone. Even if you don't enjoy gymnastics, it is a very intriguing book. There isn’t very many things I didn’t like about the book, it hit every point. The book is written in Shawn’s point of view, I don’t think the book would even make sense if it was on her point of view.